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Someone playing your music for themsleves, yeah, that's cool, no problem. Someone playing it for profit, that requires royalties, always has. (Profit - admission, cover charge, or incidental entertainment at a place of commerce.) That's the whole point of copyrighting musical performances and compositions.

Your music plays on a radio station, they pay ASCAP and ASCAP pays your label/agent/you. Your music plays in a bar, they pay. This is wh

"Someone playing your music for themsleves, yeah, that's cool, no problem. Someone playing it for profit, that requires royalties, always has. (Profit - admission, cover charge, or incidental entertainment at a place of commerce.) That's the whole point of copyrighting musical performances and compositions."

The "incidental entertainment" is where I take issue. Also, I thought the main point of copyrighting music was to prevent illegal copying/plagiarizing, not *playing*.

As for the main point, that's been quite obfuscated, and I think that's been deliberate on the part of those who profit from the institution of copyright at all.

According to the Constitution, the purpose of the allegedly-limited monopolies we grant under the names of copyright, patent, etc. is "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." I have a lot of beefs with this. I do not take it as axiomatic that "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts" is even a domain of government, although most people seem to accept it without question and vilify me for even raising the possibility of disagreement. I am also unconvinced that these monopoly grants even succeed in this goal. And, of course, in this case I'm upset that this whole system is intruding in the area of incidental entertainment, where I am under the impression it has previously not.

Now, to many of those who support this system and its expansion, the main point of copyright is to recognize a natural right that a creator or discoverer has over his intangible work. But legal authorities haven't established it this way. If it were truly such a right, it would not be for a limited time, but instead be perpetual. The truth is that society through government makes a deal with these creators to grant them this temporary privilege. It's supposed to be a positive tradeoff for all involved.

--J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers